John 4:20Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Let us then be ashamed and blush. A woman who had had five husbands, and a Samaritan besides, shows such zeal concerning doctrines. Neither the time of day, nor the fact that she had come for another task, nor anything else distracts her from the desire to know them.

But we not only fail to ask about doctrines. We act in everything carelessly and at random. Therefore everything among us is neglected.

Tell me, who among you, when at home, takes a Christian book in his hands, attends to its contents, and examines the Scripture? No one can say this of himself.

Draughts and dice may be found among very many, but books among no one, or among very few. Even those who have them use them no more than those who have none. They bind them and put them away forever in cupboards.

Their whole concern is only for the fineness of the leather on which the books are written, and for the beauty of the script, not for reading. Books are acquired not for profit, but to display wealth and boast.

To such an extreme does vainglory go. I do not hear anyone boasting that he knows what is contained in the books. I hear them boast that their books are written in golden letters.

Tell me, what profit is there in this? Scripture was not given so that we might possess it in books, but so that we might inscribe it in our hearts.

To confine the commandments only to written pages is a possession of the sort proper to Jewish vainglory. To us the law was not given in this way from the beginning, but "on tablets of flesh, of the heart" (2 Cor 3:3).

In saying this, I do not hinder the acquisition of books. On the contrary, I praise it, and even ask for it. I desire only that the words and thoughts from the books pass into our soul.

Then, by making the meaning of the writings its own, the soul is purified. If the devil does not dare enter the house where the Gospel is present, still less will any demon or sin touch or attack a soul that has made Scripture's thoughts its own.

Therefore sanctify your soul, and sanctify your body also, by always having Holy Scripture on your lips and in your heart. If shameful speech defiles us and summons demons, spiritual reading plainly sanctifies and draws the grace of the Spirit.

The Scriptures are divine hymns. Let us sing them within ourselves, and from them prepare a remedy against the sicknesses of the soul.

If we knew the importance of what is read, we would listen with greater zeal. I always say this, and I shall not cease to say it.

Is it not strange that those who attend the spectacles recount to one another the names of charioteers and dancers, their origin, homeland, and occupation? They carefully describe the merits and defects of horses.

Yet those who gather here know nothing of what takes place here. They do not even know the number of the sacred books.

If you pursue those things for pleasure, I will show you that here there is far greater pleasure.

Tell me, what is more pleasant, what is more marvelous? Is it to see a man wrestle with a man, or to see a man battle with the devil? Is it to see a bodily being contend with an incorporeal power and conquer it?

These are the contests one must watch. To imitate them is praiseworthy and profitable. By imitating them one may be crowned. But do not watch those contests in which rivalry brings shame upon the imitator.

You watch that contest together with demons. You watch this one with angels and with the Lord of angels Himself.

Tell me, if you were permitted to sit with lords and kings, to look on and enjoy the spectacle with them, would you not count this the greatest honor for yourself?

Here, together with the King of angels, you behold and see the devil seized by the neck, using every effort to overcome, yet unable to prevail at all. And do you not hasten to such a spectacle?

But how can this be done, you ask? Have the book of Holy Scripture in your hands. In it you will see the place of the contest, the length of the course, the devil's assault, and the righteous man's skill.

By looking upon this battle, you too will learn to fight and will free yourself from demons.

What takes place at worldly shows is a festival of demons, not a spectacle of human struggles. If it is not permitted to enter an idol's shrine, still less is it permitted to go to Satan's festival.

I shall not cease speaking of this and troubling you until I see amendment. To say this is "not irksome to me, and for you it is edifying" (Phil 3:1).

Do not be offended by my exhortation. If anyone must be offended, it is I, who often speak and see no obedience, not you, who always hear these things and never obey.

But may it not be that you are always accused of this. May you be delivered from this shame. Having been counted worthy of the spiritual spectacle, may you also be granted the glory to come.

This is by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with Whom to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.

She questioned Him about a matter that occupied both Jews and Samaritans. The Samaritans had their worship near what is now called Neapolis, while the Jews had theirs in Jerusalem.

She asked, "Lord, our fathers worshiped on this mountain. How then do the Jews say that one must worship in Jerusalem?"

See this inquisitive soul, a pitiable woman, yet exalted in power. She went out to draw water, and she draws from the fountain.

"The Samaritans worship here, and the Jews in Jerusalem. Resolve the question!"

A harlot speaks about matters of faith. Having been convinced that she is conversing with a prophet, she asks Him nothing earthly.

She confessed Him as Lord, yet did not ask Him for riches. "Lord, I perceive that You are a prophet." She confessed Him as Lord, yet asked about nothing except the teaching of the fathers.

"Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say that the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem."

On this mountain of Somor, Abraham offered his own son Isaac in sacrifice to God. In Jerusalem, Jacob, on his way to Mesopotamia to Laban the Syrian, saw in a dream a ladder ascending from earth to heaven.

There he wrestled with God, and therefore said, "God Almighty appeared to me at Luz" (Gen 48:3).

For this reason the Samaritan woman touches upon doctrine and says, "Lord, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say that the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem."

But the Samaritans, for their part, were not far removed from the foolishness of the Jews. They were their neighbors in country and also in ignorance.

For they thought that prayers should be raised and worship offered to God on the mountain called Gerizim. For this they too did not escape just ridicule.

Still, they had a pretext for this foolish opinion: on Mount Gerizim the blessing had been given, as it is written in Deuteronomy (Deut 27:12).

This is the subject the woman sets before the Savior as a certain weighty and hard problem. She says, "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain," and the rest.

For if you place something aromatic on coals, you will attract and hold those who come. But if you place something foul-smelling and unsightly there, you will repel them and turn them away.

So it is with thoughts. If you acquire sacred care and diligence concerning them, you will make yourself worthy of divine visitation. For this is the fragrance of the aroma that the Lord smells.

But if you nourish evil, filthy, and earthly thoughts, you will be far from divine delight. Alas, you will make yourself worthy of God's turning away from you.

"For the lawless shall not dwell before Your eyes" (Ps 5:6), the Psalmist says to God.

The law prescribes that one remember the Lord God in everything, sitting and walking, lying down and rising; paraphrasing Deut 6:7.

The Gospel says, Search the Scriptures, and in them you will find eternal life; paraphrasing Jn 5:39. The Apostle exhorts, saying, "Pray without ceasing" (1 Thess 5:17).

Therefore the one who holds his mind in earthly thoughts is certainly a transgressor. Is this not still more true of the one who sinks into evil and filthy thoughts?

But when did our fathers worship God on this mountain? It was when the patriarch Jacob fled from his brother Esau, who hated him out of envy, and obeyed his father's counsel.

He went away to Mesopotamia and then returned here with wives and children. On his return he pitched his tents near the place where the Lord spoke with the Samaritan woman.

After the incident with Dinah and the destruction of the Shechemites, God said to Jacob, as it is written in Genesis, "Arise, go up to Bethel, and make there an altar to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau your brother" (Gen 35:1).

After this word, Jacob moved and went up the nearby mountain. It is said that he built an altar there and called that place Bethel, because God appeared to him there.

For this reason the Samaritan woman says that "our fathers worshiped on this mountain," relying on those ancient men, since the laws concerning the Jerusalem temple were issued later.

And since this place was called by Jacob "the House of God," for Bethel means precisely that in translation, she asks with fervent desire to know why, they say, the House of God is no longer here but in Jerusalem.

She asks why it has been established there to offer sacrifices and worship God.

Observe that the Samaritan woman, having learned that Jesus Christ is a Jew and a Prophet, does not exactly ask Him, but sets before Him the difference between Jews and Samaritans concerning the place of worship.

"Our fathers," she says, calling the former Samaritans fathers, "worshiped," that is, prayed and offered their sacrifices, "on this mountain. But you Jews maintain that Jerusalem is the place for worship."

Having said this, she waited for the Lord's answer, so that she might learn the true and proper place of worship. Therefore John 4:21 says: "Jesus said to her, Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father."

In choosing Mount Gerizim as the place for building the temple, they based themselves on Moses' command to set up an altar on Mount Ebal (Deut 27:4). Yet in their copy of the Pentateuch they wrote Gerizim instead of Ebal.

Moses also commanded that, upon entering the promised land, a blessing be pronounced on Mount Gerizim and a curse on Mount Ebal (Deut 11:29).

Was this not why the Samaritans chose Gerizim out of these two mountains for building the temple, since it was the mountain of blessing?

The Jews, though they had no precise indication in the Law of Moses that the temple must be built specifically on Zion, nevertheless held that Jerusalem had been chosen as the place for building the temple by a special revelation (1 Kgs 8:16).

Since Moses commanded that there be only one place for public worship of God in the whole promised land, it is clear why an irreconcilable disagreement existed between Samaritans and Jews over who possessed the true place of worship.

The Samaritan woman turned to Jesus as a prophet for the resolution of this question, thereby showing her full readiness to accept His decision.

Therefore Jesus addresses her as though with these words: if you say that I am a prophet, then believe Me that in this question both Samaritans and Jews are wrong.

The time will come when the heavenly Father will be worshiped not only on this mountain or in Jerusalem, but everywhere.

Yet before this time comes, the Jews were better instructed in this matter than you. For apart from the books of Moses, you know no other books of Holy Scripture.

Moreover, the salvation of men itself must come from the Jews, to whom the Savior-Messiah was promised.

Jesus Christ justifies the preference for the worship of the Jews in Jerusalem. He does so already by the fact that the Messiah must come from the Jewish people, not from the Samaritan people, and must appear in the temple at Jerusalem.

Yet He shows the Samaritan woman that the hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will worship God neither in the Jerusalem temple nor on any mountain, but in every place. For God is Spirit, and one must worship Him in spirit and truth.

As the Psalmist teaches, the soul must bless the Lord in every place of His dominion (Ps 102:22).

This worship itself must not be tied exclusively to outward conditions and rites, as among the Jews. Nor must it be merely outward. It must be both spiritual, inward worship, and bodily, outward worship.

For man consists of body and soul. Therefore he must glorify God with body and soul, which he received from God (1 Cor 6:20).

At the same time, inward or spiritual worship must be accompanied by outward actions, by bodily worship. So also outward worship of God must express the real spiritual state and prayerful disposition of the one who prays.

It must fully agree with the soul's inward reverent disposition. It must express this disposition, not replace it.

In worshiping God, man must always remember that God, as the purest and holiest Spirit, true and upright, is near to man's spirit only when man's spirit is also pure and estranged from every lie, pretense, and sinful impurity.

Man must firmly keep in his heart that God, as the all-knowing and omnipresent Spirit, sees and condemns every hypocrisy, insincerity, and self-opinion. He rejects every pride and falsehood.

Therefore man's worship of God must be born in the depth of the human spirit and flow from a pure and humble heart. It must be the cry of man's soul to God, the turning of a son to his father.

It must be marked by sincere faith and reverence, filial love, and complete surrender to the will of God. Only such worship of God is true and pleasing to God. Only such worshipers does God hear, and their prayers He fulfills.

This was especially the chief question, the essential point of misunderstanding between the two peoples. One was the people to which she belonged, and the other the people to which her interlocutor belonged. It concerned the place of true worship of God.

"Our fathers": since this expression is later contrasted with the word "you," it must be understood of the Samaritan elders and teachers of the people in the first times after the Samaritan sect was formed.

They chose Mount Gerizim as the place for their public worship and built on it their own separate temple in the days of Nehemiah.

This temple was destroyed by John Hyrcanus a little more than one hundred years before the birth of Christ. Yet the mountain still remained a sacred place.

"Worshiped": performed public worship.

"On this mountain": that is, on Mount Gerizim. Between it and Mount Ebal, in the valley, lay Shechem, or Sychar. It was visible from Jacob's well.

Thus, at these words, the woman may have pointed with her finger to the mountain where, instead of the former temple, a synagogue could now be seen.

"But you," the Jews, cf. John 4:9, "say that the place," and so forth. The Samaritans, having chosen this mountain as the place of their worship, seem to have based themselves on the Law and on ancient examples.

In his Law Moses commanded that blessing be pronounced upon the people from Mount Gerizim (Deut 11:29).

According to the Samaritan Pentateuch, on this same mountain, not on Ebal as the commonly used copies of the Pentateuch read, Moses commanded an altar to be built for sacrifices to Jehovah (Deut 27:4).

Here the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob built altars to God (Gen 12:6-7; Gen 13:4; Gen 33:19-20).

Meanwhile Jerusalem as the place of public worship is not mentioned anywhere in the Law of Moses. Therefore the Samaritans considered themselves right in regarding Gerizim as the place of worship of God.

Yet by a special revelation of God, Jerusalem was later chosen as the place where the single temple to the one true God should be built. There the temple was built according to the will of God (2 Sam 7:2-3, 13; 1 Kgs 5:5, 12; 1 Kgs 8:15-22).

This will had also already been declared in the Law of Moses (Deut 12:5, 11).

The Samaritans accepted only the Pentateuch of Moses and rejected all the other sacred books, together with all the revelations contained in them.

They were wrong in not recognizing Jerusalem as the one place chosen by God for worship. Yet they seemed to base themselves on the Law and on examples.

Since, according to the Law of Moses, only one place in all Palestine was appointed for public worship of God, a sharp contradiction arose and developed between Samaritans and Jews on this matter.

This question was the heated question of that time. The Samaritan woman now presents it for resolution to her interlocutor, whom she has recognized as a prophet.

As for the dispute between the Samaritans and the Jews which occupied the Samaritan woman, the former based the superiority of their place of worship on several claims.

Their temple had been destroyed, and only an altar remained in its place. They held that Abraham and Isaac had built altars at the place of Samaritan worship (Gen 12:6-7; 13:4; 33:18-20).

They also held that by the Law blessings were pronounced on Mount Gerizim, while curses were pronounced on Mount Ebal (Deut 11:26ff.; 13:4; 27:11ff.).

The Jews, on the contrary, asserted that the blessings were pronounced on Mount Ebal and not on Gerizim (Exod 20:25; 27:4ff.; Josh 8:30).

They further said that afterward God chose Jerusalem as the place of worship (Ps 76:3; 1 Chr 17:12; 22:1, 6; 1 Kgs 8:16, 48).